Must-Have Landscaping and Lawn Care Equipment for Your Business
The Australian lawn care industry has experienced sustained growth over the past five years and only projects to continue this growth for the next five.
As long as people care about the way their home and yard look, there will be a need for lawn care professionals. Often even more impactful–as long as people care about what their peers think of this, property maintenance will be a necessary business.
Those looking to get into this business might get overwhelmed at the sheer variety of tools they may think they need to get started. Not only that, but each piece of lawn care equipment comes in a variety of forms. You’ll see equipment in different sizes, made of different material, costing vastly different amounts, either mechanical or manual, etc.
Where should you start? What are the essential pieces of landscaping equipment to get your business up and running?
Offer Different Services
Before we get into the actual lawn care equipment you should start your landscaping business off with, it’s good to consider what services you plan to actually offer.
Landscaping and property maintenance is far more than just cutting grass. Professionals in this line of work often try to gain skill in a great variety of different property maintenance services.
Doing so will allow you to better fulfil your customers’ needs. Another major advantage of this is that it prevents your customers from calling other lawn care service companies from coming in and taking care of the services you don’t offer. If this were to happen, your customer may consider dumping you for the convenience of having the other company just take care of everything.
Even if there are certain services that you aren’t currently able to offer, how may you get around this problem? Tell your customer that you’ll take care of the service needed. Then, subcontract the job out, calling another company to come and take care of the job while you oversee it and take your cut.
But beyond cutting grass, what are some of these other services you might offer? Consider these additional options:
- Tree removal services
- If you have a business in a colder climate, snow and ice removal
- Maintenance of shrubs, bushes, trees, and gardens
- Mulching, loaming, and lawn repair
- Another cooler climate need, offer autumn and spring clean up services
- Once the business has grown, offer landscape construction services–walkways, retaining walls, patio installations, etc.
The Quintessential Pieces of Lawn Care Equipment
The industrious neighbourhood 14-year-old boy looking to make a bit of extra money from his neighbours. The fully-equipped business with its fleet of landscape trucks, trailers, crews, and all.
These two businesses may not have too much in common. Still, if there’s a single piece of equipment these two vastly different in size businesses share in common, it’s probably a lawnmower.
This is because the most basic and frequently reoccurring need in the way of lawn care is grass maintenance.
In this regard, the entrepreneurial 14-year-old may start off with his parents small, underpowered push mower. But he and others looking to start a lucrative, professional lawn care business will want to get higher quality push and ride-on mowers.
Usually, this means starting off with a push mower. Eventually, though, you’ll want to graduate to the larger ride-on mower for the sake of efficiency (unless the great majority of your jobs are smaller, city lawns where manoeuvrability is key).
The Quintessential Piece of Tree Removal Landscape Equipment
Many homeowners have one or more trees in their yard they’d like to get rid of. Perhaps the trees are simply unsightly and the homeowner would like their house to get more sunlight. It could also be that a tree is rotting and becoming a potential hazard to fall on their home or vehicle.
Whatever the case may be, this is a lucrative service to be able to offer. Depending on various factors, such as the size of the trees, their locations, and the full range of service you’ll be providing, it’s not uncommon to charge anywhere from a few hundred dollars to even in the thousands per tree.
It also doesn’t take a major initial investment when it comes to the right lawn care equipment to perform this task.
The most basic piece of equipment you’ll want and need for this job is a quality chainsaw.
Be sure to have a chainsaw that is both large and powerful enough for the tree(s) at hand. Otherwise, you’ll be putting yourself in unnecessary danger.
Safety Is a Priority From the Start
For each and every service your professional lawn care company will be providing, there are certain dangers.
Even jobs such as hand-pruning bushes could present such dangers as getting a loose twig in your eye.
The dangers of other jobs are more obvious. Sawdust, dirt, and other material could be thrown into your eyes when using a chainsaw. Without protection, sustained exposure to loud machine-powered equipment can damage hearing.
Another important set of lawn care equipment to make sure to have from the start is landscaping safety gear such as:
- Safety glasses/sunglasses/goggles
- Earmuffs/earplugs
- Contractor gloves
Quality Is Often the Difference-Maker
Hopefully, this list has acted as a guide for you in knowing where to start when it comes to getting the lawn care equipment needed to get your landscape business up and running.
Just as important as having the right type of equipment, though, is having good quality equipment. It’s why you won’t often see the high-end, fully equipped landscape professionals buying their most important pieces of equipment at the local Bunnings.
Rather, they’re more likely to shop from vendors offering high-quality, commercial equipment.
Quality equipment helps you to perform quality work for your customers. And when it comes to keeping customers in the business of property maintenance, nothing is more important than quality. It’s something most who can are always willing to pay for.
With these points in mind, check out our full inventory of high-quality lawn care equipment for landscape professionals.
